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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466762">Colorblind</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Under the Red Hood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>bruce is as blind as a bat, morals and madness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 01:34:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,014</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24466762</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The gunshot reverberates out through the night, rippling outwards in a cascade of cause and effect, changing, twisting, turning.</em>
</p><p><em>Two people died that night. And something new was born.<br/></em><br/>-</p><p>Or: The Batfamily knows the world isn't always black or white.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Batfamily-Relationship, Tim Drake &amp; Dick Grayson &amp; Jason Todd &amp; Bruce Wayne &amp; Damian Wayne</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Colorblind</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>ugh i know this isn't my best work but i've had writers block for weeks now and this just randomly popped out. </p><p>i promise ill update my other story soon, just got sidetracked.</p><p>without further ado, please enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The gunshot reverberates out through the night, rippling outwards in a cascade of cause and effect, changing, twisting, turning.</p><p>Two people died that night. And something new was born.</p><p>Batman was born from a single gunshot and a shaking hand, and that creation ultimately led to how he saw things, right or wrong and black or white.</p><p>Killing was <em> wrong. </em> Hurting people was <em> wrong. </em></p><p>
  <em> No exceptions. </em>
</p><p>
  <em> - </em>
</p><p>The wires snap and the acrobats are falling, falling, <em> falling, </em>and a new ripple is born, surging out and spreading like wildfire, lighting up new futures and snuffing out old ones. Ashes rekindle into a new flame, still burning, still blazing.</p><p>The first Robin was born from the snap of a wire, and that creation, as well as the Bat’s tutelage, ultimately led to how he saw the world, right or wrong, black or white.</p><p>But Robin wasn’t like Batman, wasn’t dark and brooding and stubbornly refusing to change his vision of the world. Robin was <em> the Gray Son </em> and he was <em> gray, </em> didn’t like the bland starkness of Batman’s world. He grew up and became Nightwing and <em> changed, </em> drawn into a world of color and light and <em> blue </em>by his other friends and family, and the Bat was once more alone.</p><p>-</p><p>Until he found another.</p><p>The second Robin wasn’t born in the blink of an eye or the space of a second, wasn’t created in the heat of the moment like his predecessor. No, he was assembled slowly, built up over time, over long, trembling hours of adrenaline <em> (running, fighting, stealing, </em>surviving). The second Robin was hardy and persistent, lurked in the belly of Gotham with flashing fists and gnashing teeth instead of ruling it from high above like Batman did.</p><p>The second Robin was borne of heat and fury, but a single night out, hunting with a crowbar in hand, changed everything.</p><p>The Bat tried to instill his rules, his restrictions, into the second Robin’s heart, but the second Robin had never been one to conform.</p><p>And then he died.</p><p><em> Right </em> and <em> wrong </em> and <em> black </em> and <em> white </em> meshed and mixed to form <em> gray, </em> then <em> green, </em> then <em> rage. </em></p><p>Then <em> red. </em></p><p>Red Hood was born in a moment of madness and a world of <em> green, </em> and he wasn’t scared to stare down the Bat and tell him he was fucking <em> wrong, </em> fucking <em> blind. </em></p><p>But green and black don’t mesh, and neither did red and white, so the Hood eventually retreated back to a solitude of gray.</p><p>-</p><p>The third Robin was inquisitive. Curious. Morbidly so.</p><p>The third Robin was an expert at capturing stories in the flash of a camera, in the space of a heartbeat. He knew how much could change in just one moment, how color and value were notorious for bleeding seamlessly into gray gray <em> gray </em>.</p><p>The third Robin knew Batman needed something, <em> someone, </em> drowning in the bottomless black of despair after the second Robin’s fall, and so stepped up to the plate to take the burden because someone had to <em> . </em></p><p>The third Robin was born of long hours of waiting, of watching, of an urge to do <em> something </em> and a knowledge he couldn’t do <em> nothing, </em></p><p>The third Robin made it his job to <em> know </em>, know black and white, but also the grays in between, and the world of color just beyond the spectrum of a Bat’s eye.</p><p>The Bat told him black was wrong and white was right, and the third Robin nodded along and pretended he understood.</p><p>But the third Robin <em> knew, </em>just as his predecessors hadn’t.</p><p>(Later, when the third Robin became <em> Red </em>Robin, he was finally able to carve out and cling to the colors he’d known were there all along.)</p><p>-</p><p>The fourth Robin came to life in a world of blood and violence and pain and <em> rules. </em></p><p>There were rules written in bloody red, in scars and scathing marks, in disappointment and burning blades of icy steel and <em> red red red. </em></p><p>Then the Bat came, and washed out everything into a colorless gray.</p><p>Batman told the fourth Robin he’d been <em> wrong </em> and that Batman would make him <em> right, </em> drilled lines of gleaming white and black into his head, told him to stop lurking in the <em> gray </em>like a hypocrite.</p><p>But the Bat was blind, and what he thought was <em> gray </em> was really <em> red, </em> dripping bloody <em> red </em> that covered his hands and splattered the walls and smeared the lines of right and wrong into meaningless <em> nothing </em>.</p><p>But Batman didn’t see, didn’t understand, because Batman was <em> blind. </em></p><p>
  <em> - </em>
</p><p>And then he died.</p><p>Batman died, and the first Robin was forced to take up the mantle, to shove his colorful vision into a narrowed spectrum of two epitomes, maximums. To be something that he wasn’t, had given up on a long time ago.</p><p>But where Batman had once only seen gray, Nightwing saw color.</p><p>He saw the fourth Robin, saw him drowning in his red, rescued him from his own demons and pulled him into a world where red didn’t have to be horrible, didn’t have to be the only color, didn’t have to be <em> alone. </em></p><p>He let Red Robin go, despite his reluctance, because he knew the third Robin had to chase after their blind mentor in the hope that he could bring him back because he knew like he always did that he wasn’t gone, in the hope that he could bring him back <em> whole </em> and no longer <em> colorblind.</em> He let him go, because he had to, if they wanted any chance of being a family anymore<em>. </em></p><p>He approached Red Hood with his blazing, fiery fists of red and drew him back, with the Bat now gone, no longer to shove him in the category of <em> wrong </em> and label him a murderer without considering he was his <em> son, </em> that there was still depth and <em> color </em>to him, that maybe he didn’t want to be gray anymore.</p><p>And so the Batfamily finally became a <em> family, </em> and the Batfamily finally <em> saw. </em></p><p>
  <em> - </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Bruce Wayne came back to a world of color and light, and wondered how in the world could he ever have been so blind.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i know this is way more abstract than my usual style but ehhhh im not complaining. </p><p>i might expand this universe later if i feel like it, do individual characters and their colors or whatever. that might be cool. maybe. idk. tell me if you want to see that i guess</p></blockquote></div></div>
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